Despite the shameful assault on freedom of speech and academic freedom represented by the character assassination, and intimidation that resulted in the cancellation of Christie Blatchford’s speech at the the University of Waterloo on Nov 12/10, the controversy has achieved several positive results.

Not only has it generated a storm of counter-criticism in mainstream media and blogs highlighting universities as being the front line in the battle to preserve free speech, it has – happily – dramatically boosted sales of Blatchford’s book.

Our friends at Doubleday Canada say that thanks to the Waterloo protest and the publicity it has generated they’ve had another surge of demand for the book which made it necessary to order a reprint of Helpless.

Comment by Mark Vandermaas

All who have supported our four-year long quest to expose and oppose racial policing in Caledonia owe an ironic, yet distasteful, debt of gratitude to the radicals and anarchists who have now helped to ensure that even more people will read Helpless and understand the despicable conduct of those whose lawlessness they supported, and the dangers these self-appointed censors pose to the Charter of Rights.

Sam Gualtieri - suffered permanent brain damage after being assaulted by native protesters Sept 13/07 during illegal occupation while in a home he was building for his daughter. Click image to read his family's tragic statement of claim in Superior Court.

It should be no surprise that those who support and/or actively worked to enable the native extremists who terrorized Caledonia do not want the victims they helped create to have a voice, and then vilify those of us who have been willing to speak for them. As I noted in my presentation at the 2010 New Directions in Aboriginal Policy forum:

The words ‘heartless’ and ‘cruel’ seem inadequate to describe the irony of a situation wherein an organized group from one race of people terrorized others with racial slurs, fire, violence, vandalism, and property seizures and then tormented their victims with false accusations of being white supremacists.

As the son of parents who lived in Nazi-occupied Holland I am offended to the very core of my being by the blaming of innocent victims for racially-motivated crimes committed against them.

Mark Vandermaas presentation to 2010 New Directions in Aboriginal Policy forum, May 05/10: Listening to Victims: A Fresh Approach to Healing and Reconciliation [PDF, 21p, 8.5MB]

Donna Laframboise has written for the National Post, Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Chatelaine and Toronto Life. When other journalists lost interest in the notorious Guy Paul Morin case after he was wrongfully convicted of murder in 1992, she used her freelance column in the Star to expose the flawed forensic science that led to his conviction.

She is also a former member of the board of directors for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association between 1993 and 1998 – and served as a Vice-President from 1998-2001.

Donna’s remarkable accomplishments, which include being the founder of NOconsensus.org – a website devoted to researching misinformation related to climate change, enables her to offer a unique perspective on the shameful attack on free speech at the University of Waterloo against Christie Blatchford by doctoral student Dan Kellar…who happens to teach climate change to undergraduates.

Suzuki’s Children (The Political Kind)
by Donna Laframboise

Dan Kellar is a geography student at the University of Waterloo. He is currently writing a doctoral thesis under the supervision of an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change author. He teaches courses in climate change to impressionable undergraduates, and describes himself this way:

I’m a PhD researcher at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada and a decolonial propagandist. I’m an organizer with AW@L (peaceculture.org)

Last week, Kellar and a handful of other students prevented journalist Christie Blatchford from speaking to a campus audience about her newly-released book, Helpless. An excerpt from that book appears here (three more are scheduled). The book describes how, in a dispute in a small Ontario community, for nearly five years the police have chosen not to enforce the law when suspects are of aboriginal (First Nations) descent. To quote from a news story:

Ms. Blatchford does not claim to have written a “360-degree view” of [the dispute in] Caledonia, but rather an account of one narrow slice of it — the failure of the rule of law. “I care about the rule of law, I believe in it. To me it’s natural that is what I would have concentrated on,” she said.

UPDATED 2030 Nov 17/10 — The University of Waterloo has issued a strongly worded apology to Helpless author Christie Blatchford after a small group of students were able to intimidate the university into cancelling her Nov 12/10 appearance at the Humanities Theatre:

Apology after author is silenced

University officials issued a statement yesterday in the wake of a Friday night incident in which Globe and Mail columnist Christie Blatchford was prevented from speaking at a scheduled event in the Humanities Theatre.

A group of protesters took exception to what they called the “racist” attitude of her book Helpless, which deals with the four-year standoff over native land claims in the village of Caledonia in Ontario’s Haldimand County. Blatchford had been invited to campus by the university bookstore to speak about her book. After some time, it was announced that her talk would be rescheduled.

The events of the evening were live-blogged by the Wilfrid Laurier University student newspaperThe Cord, and got some media attention yesterday.

Toby Barrett, Caledonia’s Member of Provincial Parliament (Haldimand-Norfolk) today asked the Liberal government if Christie Blatchford’s shocking book ‘Helpless: Caledonia’s Nightmare of Fear and Anarchy, And How the Law Failed All of Us’ – which hit bookshelves today – would lead them to finally call a public inquiry into the matter. Barrett’s email is reprinted below.

The Liberals, once again, told the Legislature they were relying on the recommendations of the Ipperwash Inquiry – even though they (and the Opposition) know full well that it never studied the issue of preventing native violence against innocent residents. Please see the notes and resources following Barrett’s email:

The release of Christie Blatchford’s book at 9 a.m. this morning provided a good opportunity to query the McGuinty government on their plans for the dispute.

Please find below the news release regarding the questions I asked in the Ontario Legislature, as well as the draft Hansard transcript.

Toby

For Immediate Release

October 26, 2010

Is Blatchford’s ‘Helpless’ the final word on Caledonia?

Minister shrugs call for public inquiry

Queen’s Park – On the launch of renowned journalist Christie Blatchford’s chronicle of the land occupation in Caledonia, Haldimand-Norfolk MPP Toby Barrett asked Premier McGuinty if this book represents the final chapter.

“Her book is titled Helpless: Caledonia’s Nightmare of Fear and Anarchy, and How the Law Failed All of Us. “Some questions, Premier: Does this wrap it up? Is this the final say on what happened, on what went wrong down in Caledonia? Premier, now will you get to the bottom of this?”

In true McGuinty fashion, the Premier passed the buck to Attorney General Chris Bentley who ducked the question and took the time to speak about land claims rather than Barrett’s inferred questions about law and order.

In the introduction of the book, Blatchford states, “What the book is really about is the failure of government to govern and to protect all its citizens equally. She also notes, “Over the ensuing four years — and then some, as the occupation continues to this day — the rule of law was utterly decimated.”

This is the first in a series of excerpts and related commentary from Christie Blatchford’s upcoming book, Helpless: Caledonia’s Nightmare of Fear and Anarchy, And How The Law Failed All of Us. It tells Caledonia’s story and the story of those who fought back to preserve the rule of law:

The Globe & MailCaledonia: the town that law forgot [PDF]by Christie Blatchford
Oct 24/10

Now that I’ve written a whole book about what happened in Caledonia, Ont., starting in February of 2006 and continuing to this day, it’s daunting to offer a precis. But basically it’s this: The people of that lovely small town just an hour and change from Toronto were abandoned by their governments, and ultimately by their police force, and left to fend for themselves. The book is about the failure of government to govern, and of leaders to lead.

From the get-go, the federal and provincial governments had adopted a hands-off policy to the occupation. Ottawa didn’t even recognize the tenuous land claim that residents of Six Nations were belatedly making, and deferred to Queen’s Park; the Ontario government nonetheless treated the occupation as purely a land claim and somehow, overtly or in the subtle ways that are the hallmark of practised politicians, made its wishes known; the Ontario Provincial Police, first under then-commissioner Gwen Boniface and later under her successor Julian Fantino, now a star candidate for the Stephen Harper Conservatives, obligingly carried that message to the force’s rank and file.

The end result was a form of policing that would be simply unrecognizable to Canadians living anywhere else in the country: cops who watched or turned away as the law was broken, sometime brazenly; cops who appeared to take sides and would take action against only one group of people and not the other; cops who refused to make arrests, conduct investigations or protect the public.

Some of those officers who resisted were either punished, reprimanded or disciplined, with the result that the others lost heart.

Few people are as shamed by Caledonia, sickened by their own impotence, as the men and women of the OPP who worked there regularly.

At one end of the spectrum is a letter written by then-commissioner Fantino in December of 2008.

UPDATED – The Hamilton Spectator has published the first story based on quotes from Christie Blatchford’s book, Helpless.

(Note that the date of the meeting with Inspector Getty described in paragraph 3 was actually April 28/06, not Feb 28th as shown. The meeting occurred eight days after the disastrous raid of April 20/06):﻿﻿

CALEDONIA It was a bizarre display of self-congratulation for an OPP commander whose elite squad had been publicly humiliated by a group of crudely armed native protesters only eight days before.

Instead of removing protesters from Douglas Creek Estates (DCE), members of the OPP tactical team were themselves pelted with rocks, attacked with clubs and other makeshift weapons and driven off the occupation site as television cameras rolled.

But on Feb. 28, 2006, two months after the protesters took over the subdivision, Inspector Mel Getty held a meeting to praise his troops for their handling of the volatile situation.

He declared the operation a smashing success and defied anybody to disagree with him. “If anyone doesn’t agree, you can leave the door right now,” he stated while pointing to the exits.

According to Globe and Mail columnist Christie Blatchford’s new book, Helpless, Getty then said something even more astonishing. The new mission, he stated, was for the OPP to protect “natives from non-natives.” It was the first time a superior officer had told them they should be treating people differently because of their racial background. […]

After the abortive April 20, 2006 raid the protesters had set up checkpoints around the 40-hectare residential subdivision, issued passports to residents and imposed curfews. Debbie Thomson, who was forced to go through the checkpoints, told Blatchford the protesters had even threatened to body search her. But they backed off when she told them to get lost.

Share this:

This is a joint education project by Canadian Advocates for Charter Equality and the Caledonia Victims Project. This is NOT the publisher’s website for Christie Blatchford’s book HELPLESS, nor is it endorsed by the author. Click here to learn more.

Email Subscription

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Christie Blatchford: Caledonia law = Deep South law

“…the law in Haldimand County operates as the law in America’s Deep South once worked, where there was one law for the white man, who could break it with impunity, and another for the black man. In Haldimand County, since the occupation began, there has been one law for natives and another for non-natives.“